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September 12, 2016

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna speaks with journalist Dan Rather about new genome editing technologies and their implications for science, medicine, and society. This conversation in science was produced by iBiology.

September 9, 2016

Jerry Craddock and Charles Faulhaber, both professors emeriti of Spanish and former chairs of UC Berkeley’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, have been elected to join 100 scholars and researchers as foreign corresponding members of theRoyal Spanish Academy, or Real Academia Española.

September 8, 2016

An intriguing finding in nematode worms suggests that having a little bit of extra fat may help reduce the risk of developing some neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

September 7, 2016

The Berkeley campus is perennially a hub of artistic performances, exhibits and readings in the Bay Area, and this semester is no exception. From a world premiere by Mark Morris to theater inspired by student veterans to readings by bestselling authors, the arts are thriving at Berkeley.

August 31, 2016

Among the six scientists who emerged this week from a yearlong simulation of Mars was UC Berkeley alumna Sheyna Gifford, who left family and friends behind in August 2015 to live in a 1,000-square-foot dome on the north side of Mauna Loa.

August 29, 2016

The idea behind On the Same Page is simple: if you give every incoming student at UC Berkeley a copy of the same book, you’re also giving them each something in common. With a school as large and diverse as Berkeley, establishing common ground with classmates can be challenging. On the Same Page tries to ease the process for incoming students — but the fact that this year’s title is both challenging and timely is no accident.

August 24, 2016

“What’s the biggest, single deciding factor in your choosing of Berkeley over other colleges?” That’s the question a Berkeley News team —Hanna Juehan Ye, a senior in media studies, who talked to dozens of students, and Ryan Hoang, a senior studying sociology, who shot their photos — asked dozens of students at new student convocation Monday.

August 19, 2016

Liu and fellow undergraduate Xiao Fu applied to join this team through Berkeley’s Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP). The program is designed to give students experience working on innovative research projects in the field with UC Berkeley faculty.

CRISPR-Cas9 is the go-to technique for knocking out genes in human cell lines to discover what the genes do, but the efficiency with which it disables genes can vary immensely. UC Berkeley researchers have now found a way to boost the efficiency with which CRISPR-Cas9 cuts and disables genes up to fivefold, in most types of human cells, making it easler to create and study knockout cell lines and, potentially, disable a mutant gene as a form of human therapy.

August 17, 2016

Search-and-rescue dogs are prized for their ability to sniff out a hiker buried in deep snow. But how exactly do their noses work? UC Berkeley neuroscientist Lucia Jacobs is exploring the smell navigation mechanics of tracking dogs as well as smaller animals who use a similar olfactory GPS. Her research was featured on the PBS NewsHour Aug. 16, and is highlighted in the video below.

August 16, 2016

What’s life like aboard a scientific research vessel plying the California coast deploying robots to unlock important data about climate change? A team of scientists and engineers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have just set out on such a venture.

August 15, 2016

The new 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities once again places UC Berkeley at the very top of the list of public universities worldwide. And Berkeley placed third overall, up one slot from its 2015 ranking, published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UC Berkeley follows Harvard and Stanford. Cambridge and MIT round out the top five. The ARWU rankings emphasize the quality of faculty and research.

August 10, 2016

L&S students in Michael Cohen's American studies class, "The Secret History of America" were selected to tell the secret history of America to the public on Medium.com, these were some of the stories they chose to tell.

August 8, 2016

Dana Vollmer, Abbey Weitzeil, Nathan Adrian, and Anthony Ervin are Olympian Golden Bears who have impressively won medals in the first two days of the games. L&S Alum Dana Vollmer won silver for the 4 x 100 meter free relay, as well as bronze for the 100 meter butterfly in women's swimming. L&S Alum Anthony Ervin won gold in the 4 x 100 meter free relay, along with Cal alum Nathan Adrian. Stay tuned for more updates on the Cal Bears in Rio.

August 5, 2016

Fifty Golden Bears will compete in the 2016 Olympics this month, and nearly half are students who graduated from the College of Letters & Science or are currently declared in an L&S major. Tune into the Olympics broadcast to see these astounding Bears try to bring home gold. For a list of all fifty Golden Bears competing in Rio, see CalBears.

August 4, 2016

UC Berkeley engineers have built the first dust-sized, wireless sensors that can be implanted in the body, bringing closer the day when a Fitbit-like device could monitor internal nerves, muscles or organs in real time.